Welcome to Ham Radio's Daily Satirical Newsletter

WEEKEND EDITION: Good morning from Cape Ann, 34 and sunny ..

ARRL Seeks News Editor

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Amateur Radio and the art of getting started ...

One of the regular topics of conversation in amateur radio, especially for those new to the community, is where to start? The sheer volume of available options is often overwhelming. If you've never encountered the complexity associated with this amazing hobby the experience can be disheartening and even demoralising.

In my early years I was results driven. Getting on air, making noise, logging a contact, adding a country, winning a contest, rinse and repeat, get better, do more. There have been numerous occasions when I came home from one of my adventures disappointed, sometimes bitterly so.

That happened for quite some time, until one day I realised that the journey in and of itself is the reward.

That might sound disingenuous, so let me illustrate.

This week I set-up an automatic beacon in my shack that can be heard by stations around the planet, letting me know just how far my signal can travel at any particular moment, using my own station antenna and local propagation. As projects go, it continues to be an adventure.

As you might recall, I like low power operation, truth be told, I love low power. The smaller, the better. Less is more and all that. I recently completed the first leg of a journey to set-up a permanent beacon. For years I'd been dabbling around the edges. On the weekend, whilst I was in my shack, I'd regularly set-up my computer and radio, set it to WSPR beacon and see what stations heard me. I couldn't turn my radio below 5 Watts, so that's what I used. Before you start, yes, I could turn down the volume, but that involves math and I wanted a result, now.

It filled a gap using WSPR, Weak Signal Propagation Reporter, like that. For a while, I improved on things by having a receiver set-up that monitored the bands all day every day and recently I turned it back on, with limited success, more on that shortly.

What I really wanted was to see where my signal was going, not what I could hear. I received a few emails suggesting that a ZachTek WSPR Desktop transmitter, built and sold by Harry, SM7PNV, would be just the ticket. It's a little metal box with USB and SMA connectors. One SMA for the supplied GPS antenna, used for location and time, the other for a transmit antenna. USB provides serial for configuration and power if it's operating in stand-alone mode. Yes, you can operate it without needing a computer and if you want it does band-hopping. After configuring it with things like your callsign and bands, you can plug-in the GPS, your antenna and power it via USB and it will run as an automatic 200 milliwatt WSPR beacon.

That device in turn prompted a journey to discover a more appropriate antenna, since my current station antenna uses an automatic tuner that won't get triggered by this tiny transmitter. That caused an exploration in how and where to mount any new antenna, with a side-trip into finding a specific anti-seize compound locally. To pick the mounting hardware, I had to get into wind loading, how strong my satellite dish mount might be, how to install and tune a multi-band antenna. The list just keeps growing and that voyage continues.

I'm tracking the requirements with a project specific check-list, just to make sure that I don't miss any steps and have a place to document new discoveries when they invariably hit me in the face. So-far, so-good.

The WSPR monitor receiver is currently connected to a generic telescopic dipole, mounted indoors, which in the past gave me a much better result than my station vertical, so I should be able to keep both running.

Next on the list is to construct a live propagation map for my station, then a way to switch modes on that map, so I can tell if it's worth calling CQ without going blue in the face. I'm also working on a WSPR transmitter for 2m and 70cm, because they are under served in my neck of the woods.

The takeaway from all this is that whilst there are many steps, and truth be told, that list is growing as I learn, each step is tiny and doable. The only thing that separates me from someone who doesn't know where to start, is this.

I started. You can too. Anywhere. Doesn't matter. Pick anything that tickles your fancy. Start digging. It's a hobby, not a profession. What ever floats your boat, what ever makes you excited, what ever you're interested in, pick it and do something, anything.

That's how you get anywhere in Amateur Radio, and Open Source, and life for that matter, just start.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

This ham radio is unsafe at any frequency

When we were kids we rode bicycles without pads and helmets. We drank sugary drinks. We played with chemistry sets and power tools. We also built things that directly used AC line current. [Mike] remembers and built one, presumably more to discuss the safety precautions around things that can shock you and not entice you to duplicate it. He calls it The Retro QRP Widowmaker, if that’s any kind of a hint. (Video of this unsafe transmitter also embedded below.)

The design showed up from time to time in old electronic magazines. Built on an open board and with no ground wire, the radio didn’t need a complex power supply. This wasn’t limited to transmitters, either. Some TVs and radios had a “hot chassis.” That’s why we were taught to touch an unknown chassis with the back of your hand first. A shock will contract your muscles and that will pull your arm away instead of making you grab the electrically active part.

For safety’s sake, [Mike] used an isolation transformer to keep from having a disaster. A big resistor drops a lot of voltage to supply the tube in the circuit. There was a neon bulb to indicate if you have your plugs the wrong way around making things dangerous.

We enjoyed [Mike’s] excellent code using an old J-38 style key. Not everyone uses a paddle or a keyboard. Nowadays, you don’t need high voltages for little transmitters. Also, $50 today is probably worth less than $10 was back then. If you have a hankering for vintage gear, try old transistors, instead.

Source:
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/03/this-ham-radio-is-unsafe-at-any-frequency/

Moon bouncing and radar imaging with LoRa

The LoRa radio protocol is well known to hardware hackers because of its Long Range (hence the name) but also its extremely low power use, making it a go-to for battery powered devices with tiny antennae. But what if the power wasn’t low, and the antenna not tiny? You might just bounce a LoRa message off the moon. But that’s not all.

The team that pulled off the LoRa Moonbounce consisted of folks from the European Space Agency, Lacuna Space, and the CA Muller Radio Astronomy Station Foundation which operates the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope. The Dwingeloo Radio Telescope is no stranger to Amateur Radio experiments, but this one was unique.

Operating in the 70 cm Amateur Radio band (430 MHz) meant that the LoRa signal was not limited to the low power signals allowed in the ISM bands. The team amplified the signal to 350 Watts, and then used the radio telescope’s 25 Meter dish to direct the transmission toward the moon.

The result? Not only were they able to receive the reflected transmission using the same transceiver they modulated it with — an off the shelf IOT LoRa radio — but they also recorded the transmission with an SDR. By plotting frequency and doppler delay, the LoRa transmission was able to be used to get a radar image of the moon- a great dual purpose use that is noteworthy in and of itself.

LoRa is a versatile technology, and can even be used for tracking your High Altitude Balloon that’s returned to Terra Firma.

https://hackaday.com/2021/12/03/moon-bouncing-and-radar-imaging-with-lora/

FRIDAY EDITION: Another day in paradise....Living on the island and on top of solid granite, the Radon gas level is high in the basement so I am having a remediation system installed next week to the tune of 1200 bucks...

The December PDF of the GEO Newsletter weather satellite publication produced by the Group for Earth Observation is now available for free download

The Group for Earth Observation's aim is to enable amateur reception of weather and earth imaging satellites that are in orbit or planned for launch in the near future.

Membership of GEO is free.

This edition includes:
-The ISS Sally Ride EarthKAM
- Sea Ice forming in Kuskokwim Bay
- La Palma Volcano: How Satellites help us Monitor Eruptions
- Currently Active Weather Satellites and Frequencies

Download the GEO Newsletter from
http://leshamilton.co.uk/GEO/newsletter.htm

ST-4003W Time Adjustment Software for selected Icom Amateur Radios

The ST-4003W is a Windows based software, which allows you to set the radio's time from your PC's time by connecting your radio to a PC.

The software is available for the following Amateur radios (as of November 2021).

Also available to download for free from Google Play is an Android app called the ST-4003A.

IC-705
IC-7100
IC-7300
IC-7600
IC-7610
IC-7850/IC-7851
IC-9700

To download the software please visit: ST-4003W Time Adjustment Software Download Page.

Before downloading this software, please thoroughly read the "ST-4003W Instructions” for installation details. You will need to use a USB cable to connect the radio to your PC. USB port types differ depending on the radio, so please check the radio's port type before preparing the cable.

THURSDAY EDITION: Raining here on Cape Ann but all is well...Some activity on ten meters worth listening in on....

New Section Manager Appointed in Maine

How ham radio signals are helping locate MH370

There has been world-wide reporting of the work done using amateur radio WSPR signals in an attempt to pinpoint the location of missing flight MH370

In addition to the Times and other national UK newspapers the story has also been covered by 9 News in Australia.

The surge of publicity on December 1 came as the result of the claim by Richard Godfrey that he had pinpointed the precise location of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean.

9 News says:

Mr Godfrey's research, which he claims will lead to the discovery of MH370 next year, is based on Global Detection and Tracking of Any Aircraft Anywhere (GDTAAA) software and Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) data.

WSPR can be best visualised as laser beams which criss-cross the world, with any disturbances logged in a database.

According to Mr Godfrey's research, GDTAAA combined with WSPR data provided hundreds of trackable radio signals every two minutes during the flight of the Boeing 777, allowing him to zero in on a critical search zone.

Read the full 9 News story and watch the TV Report at
https://www.9news.com.au/national/mh370-crash-location-pinpointed-in-indian-ocean-new-research-claims/9769769c-6a71-4dd4-8dcc-6206396a66c3

 

WEDNESDAY EDITION: Good morning, late start due to getting quotes on materials at the lumber yard...Santa is getting back on the airwaves....

Propagation de K7RA

December 1, 2021

IARU Reports Another Over-the-Horizon Radar System is Under Construction in India

ARISS contacts cancelled due to EVA changes

ARISS has announced that school contacts planned for Thursday, December 2 have been cancelled due to postponement of planned spacewalk by radio amateurs KI5LAL and KE5HOC

ARISS contacts scheduled with Wolfgang-Kubelka-Realschule (WKR), Schondorf am Ammersee, Germany and Berufliche Schule Direktorat 1 Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany have unfortunately been cancelled for this Thursday, December 2, 2021 due to EVA schedule changes on the ISS.

Early on November 30 NASA announced the spacewalk by radio amateurs Kayla Barron KI5LAL and Tom Marshburn KE5HOC had been postponed.

NASA said "The evening of Monday, Nov. 29, NASA received a debris notification for the International Space Station. Due to the lack of opportunity to properly assess the risk it could pose to the astronauts, teams have decided to delay the spacewalk planned for Tuesday, Nov. 30 until more information is available."
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

When an ISS EVA takes place the amateur radio stations on the ISS are switched off. It is likely that the ISS Slow Scan TV transmissions that had been planned for Dec 2 will not take place either.

 

TUESDAY EDITION: Well I went to the PO to buy the "forever stamps" and the girl behind the counter laughed and told me it was a scam. Mr. Mike emailed me and said he got scammed and his paypal account refused payment....

Port City marks 80 years since start of World War II with 'Wartime Wilmington Week'

Eighty years ago, residents of Wilmington, along with the rest of the country, were shocked to hear of the deadly Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, an act that marked the beginning of the United States' entry into World War II. 

In Wilmington, Wilbur Jones was only 7 years old on Dec. 7, 1941. But he still remembers where he was and what he was doing when he heard about the attack: playing in the sun room of his family's Forest Hills home while listening to a radio broadcast — on WMFD, the only Wilmington station at the time — of an NFL game between Washington and Philadelphia. 

World War II changed the course of his life, Jones said recently. As a child, he closely followed the war in the papers. Time spent reenacting battles in the woods near his home led him to a career in the Navy, where he would go on to serve for 41 years.

After returning home to Wilmington, Jones, who's also a published author with multiple books to his credit, focused his efforts on preserving the history of what's now known as the Hannah Block Historic USO/Community Arts Center downtown, which, as it happens, first opened 80 years ago, in December of 1941.   FULL ARTICLE

MONDAY EDITION: 34 degrees and a good day for hamming.....$39 dollars today at the Post Office for 100 forever stamps, get your butt down to the post office.....The NE Patriots are doing a lot better than I thought they would, exciting to watch....

K1TP back row left, 1962 tenth grade....

Slow-Scan TV Transmissions from ISS Set for December 1 - 2

WEEKEND EDITION: 7AM and I am listening to CW on 10 anf 15 meters, no SSB signals...who said CW was dead?

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Right now it's 10:45

That piece of information is unhelpful without any context. I could just as easily have told you that it's 2:45 and it would be just as accurate, helpful and meaningless. The point being that without context, you don't know if I'm an insomniac, drinking morning tea, recovering from a late lunch or putting on my PJs.

If I'm talking to people in the same room, supplying the time happens within the context of that room, but if the world is our oyster, our room is a little larger and dawn for one person is dusk for another, at the same time.

Before we could communicate at the speed of light and travel faster than a bullet, time was a relative thing related to the location of the Sun and considered mainly by mariners and astronomers. Even with the advent of increasingly accurate clocks, for most people, noon was when the Sun was at its highest point and the local clock was set to that.

When our world got smaller, because communication and travel got faster, people started noticing that noon in one place wasn't the same as noon in another place. It became a real problem when people travelled hundreds of kilometres by train in a day. Imagine coming up with a train time-table that takes into account each local version of noon.

In an attempt to deal with this, railroad managers in the United States established 100 railroad time zones. This malarkey continued until the 18th of November 1883 when four standard time zones were established for the continental United States.

Of course, being human and all, that was a local solution. Great Britain had already established its own standards for time for England, Scotland and Wales.

In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference, held in Washington DC, adopted a proposal that designated the Prime Meridian for longitude and timekeeping should be the one that passes through the centre of the transit instrument at the Greenwich Observatory in the United Kingdom and established Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT as the world's time standard.

Why Greenwich? At the time the United Kingdom had more ships and shipping using Greenwich as their reference than the rest of the world put together and the observatory at Greenwich had produced the highest quality data for a long time. As an aside, on a French map before 1911, 0 degrees was centred over Paris. There are other wrinkles, like the fact that Earth isn't round and as a result the Greenwich Prime Meridian is not quite in the right spot because measurements didn't take into account local variations in gravity.

In 1972, Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC replaced GMT as the standard for time in the world. It now references the International Reference Meridian, currently about a 102.5m east of the original Prime Meridian passing through Greenwich. It's on the move with reference to land because tectonic plates shift and where it is today is not where it's going to be tomorrow, so don't go looking for a marker to indicate the IRM.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world people needed to come to terms with how to standardise on what to call time zones. The USA establishing four time zones was just for one country. Depending on who's counting, there's over 200 countries and each has its own set of time zones. Which each might include daylight saving, or not. For some, like VK6, daylight saving was voted on several times. Trials were had and time changes during summer were implemented, then reversed, then reversed again, and again, in total, VK6 did this dance six times and we currently don't observe daylight saving, neither does VK4 or VK8.

So, not only does 10:45 require location context, it also requires that you know if there's daylight saving happening at that time in that location, which to add insult to injury, doesn't actually happen on the same date each year. It gets better if you consider time in another location. Do they have daylight saving, is it on at the time, do we have daylight saving at that time, how many hours are we apart, when is this actual event and what if we're coordinating efforts between people in multiple locations? Did I mention that summer in Europe is in July and in Australia it's in January?

In case you're wondering, tracking all this is a massive job currently under the purview of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The person coordinating this, whilst wrangling the politics of naming things, including dealing with warring countries who take umbrage at having their time zone named after "the enemy" is computer scientist Paul Eggert, the project lead of the time zone database.

War aside, time zones are political. For example, Dublin Time was stamped out by the British as punishment for the Easter Rising.

If that wasn't exciting enough, to provide local context, we use abbreviations to indicate which location we're talking about. In VK6 that abbreviation is WST, simple enough, Western Standard Time. What if your abbreviation was CST? Is that Central Standard Time in North America, China Standard Time, Cuba Standard Time, or even Australian Central Standard Time. If your local time zone is IST, you could be referring to Indian Standard Time, Israel Standard time, Irish Standard Time or even Irish Summer Time.

As radio amateurs we hold global contests and we advertise our online club meetings and events. Often, we refer to times and dates that might be understood by an audience of one, but utterly confusing to the rest of the world.

So, what do you do with this?

Simple, use UTC. My timezone, called WST, or AWST, is UTC+8. F-troop, a weekly net for new and returning amateurs runs every Saturday morning at midnight UTC, that's 0:00 UTC. No confusion, no daylight saving, everyone can figure out if it's worth being awake for and I must applaud the amateurs from G-land and PA with their contributions in the very, very early hours of their morning.

So, next time you make some noise about a contest, or any amateur activity that goes beyond the people in your suburb, specify the time in UTC. Who knows, perhaps one day, even the likes of SpaceX, Apple and Google will start using UTC to announce their events ...

As Goldie Hawn put it: "Well, in my time zone that's all the time I have, but maybe in your time zone I haven't finished yet. So stay tuned!"

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

 

Bouvet Island 3Y0J DXpedition news - 3Y0J ZOOM meetings! Ken, LA7GIA, Co-Leader of the 3Y0J DXpedition, posted the following on FaceBook [edited]: While I was in TL operating CW+FT8 simultaneously, some of the Bouvet antennas arrived in my gararage - More antennas are currently being shipped from our sponsors Spiderbeam and DXEngineering. For the lowband we will have a combination of spider-poles and aluminium antennas - two different technologies. That is a red thread throughout the project. Always plan for several options, different technologies and backups and backups. We're confident our antenna strategy is well funded and well thought through. We have developed an antenna layout, a backup and spare part philosophy that will survive 35 to 40 m/s. All together we're confident this philosophy will produce strong signals all over the world as shown in our propagation analysis. We have been working closely with a world leading propagation analyst, and our HFTA analysis includes the most updated terrain on Bouvet, and its impact on our signals. It all looks very promising! All this, the antenna farm and the propagation predition will be on the Agenda when we launch our series of Zoom meetings for our Premier sponsors. People who just want access to these meeting can support us with donating 26 USDs through our (www.3y0j.no) website to gain access. In these meetings we will present various topics, you will meet some our team members, interact with us, and we will have a Q&A session. Want to attend the meeting? Please visit our website (www.3y0j.no) and buy access. Our first meeting is being planned weekend 4th and 5th December - if you already are a sponsor, check your email soon for a Zoom invitation link. We have sent out invitations to 60 persons who have gained access to these meeting! Agenda first meeting December 4th: * Intro * HFTA propagation analysis * Antenna plans * Q&A * Antenna layout 73, Ken LA7GIA, and the 3Y0J team

Dayton Hamvention expects to be live event in 2022

Dayton Hamvention® organizers are planning to mount the first in-person show in 2022, following 2 years of COVID-related cancellations. The event is set for May 20 – 22 at the Greene County Fairgrounds and Expo Center in Xenia, Ohio. Last January, Hamvention organizers from the sponsoring Dayton Amateur Radio Association (DARA) announced they were calling off the 2021 event after considerable planning was already under way. The Hamvention Executive Committee cited lagging COVID-19 vaccine distribution in the US and the emergence of a more communicable form of the virus.

THANKSGIVING DAY EDITION: I wish you all a relaxing day with family and friends....

Benson Hamfest, the classic!

There are only a few hamfest‘s that I would classify as 'classic'. The Benson Hamfest in Benson, North Carolina is one of those. It has your typical environment of a large parking lot with people parking their cars and selling tables full of old Ham Radio gear out of them.

It has a large grill cooking thick hamburgers for everyone to enjoy at lunch. Inside there are long tables with vendors selling either used equipment, test equipment, wire antennas, in various and sundry different things that are difficult to find. This is usually one of the better attended hamfest but it is a smaller one. Big enough that you can go around and see everything in a couple of hours, have a hamburger and then go home.

This year I woke up at 4am and drove with Doug K4ROK and his daughter and son-in-law. When we arrived, we set up tables out in front of his minivan and unloaded a lot of equipment that came from two different estates. He managed to sell a lot of the stuff sitting out there enjoying the beautiful sunshine. Half of the time there’s a lot more talking about radios and experiences than selling. It is a good time to have “eyeball QSO’s”.

The mission to go to the hamfest was just to look and not buy anything. Oh well, the best laid plans went astray. The first thing I find is what looks like an aluminum box off a ship that is some kind of tuner for 160 meters. Looks like it has potential. Get it home, clean it up and paint it so that it can hide in the bushes and tune a hidden antenna!

Other things that I could not live without soon appeared in my bag like antenna wire, chokes and baluns. Of course you cannot have enough adapters from the RF Connection (yeah Joel!). Finally two thick hamburgers later, we went home and took a nap! The end of a perfect hamfest day. Look forward to the next one as I know I forgot to buy something.

This time I will bring things to sell!

73 Peter, N4PVH

WEDNESDAY EDITION: I love Thanksgiving, just food, family, and TV. No radio allowed...

Radio ham has over 500 wireless sets

France 3 TV reports on keen radio enthusiast Bernard Pottin F6CND who has more than 500 wireless sets

Bernard Pottin has been collecting for twenty years old radio sets. In the garage of his house in Bouquigny, in the Marne, he has accumulated more than 500.

Bernard Pottin spends hours in his garage in Bouquigny, west of Epernay in the Marne, repairing his radio sets. The oldest can only pick up long wave.

Bernard has been passionate about radio since childhood. "At my parents' house, there were TSF [wireless telegraphy] stations where you could listen to amateur radio," he says. This is where the passion was born. I became a radio amateur in 1972. Then I developed this collection about twenty years ago."

Bernard sometimes manages to receive BBC programs in the United Kingdom, "but very weakly". Destroyed by television and replaced by transistors, the wireless counts its last hours of reception on the long waves.

Triumph of the Amateurs - The Transatlantic Tests of 1921 The Antique Wireless Museum has released a video of the talk given by Edward Gable K2MP and Mark Erdle AE2EA about the successful amateur radio Transatlantic Tests of 1921 Early in the twentieth century Amateur Radio Operators had been exiled to the wavelengths shorter than 200 meter's as part of a power play by large communication companies and the US government to set aside what they thought were the most desirable radio spectrum for themselves, leaving the shortwave wasteland below 200 meters to hams, but in 1921 a small group of radio amateurs performed an experiment that proved hams really had the better end of the deal. Ed Gable, K2MP, and Mark Erdle, AE2EA, tell the story of the Transatlantic Tests of 1921, which were conceived of by radio amateurs, and proved that even with modest equipment, the Atlantic Ocean could be spanned with shortwave signals, opening up improved communications for many more purposes. These "short" wavelengths below 200 meters had been considered useless by commercial and governmental interests, resulting in the Radio Act of 1912 banning amateur activity in the wavelengths longer than 200 meters. As a result of the successful efforts of radio amateurs in Transatlantic Test Project , over the last 100 years many experimenters and inventors became focused on continually improving wireless technologies and devices. The direct results of that inventing are the smart phones, smart watches, smart TVs, wireless Internet routers, GPS tracking devices, and Bluetooth headsets, all of which depend on wireless technologies. Those pioneers 100 years ago could never have envisioned the way society has been enabled and transformed by wireless! For more information visit http://1BCG.org Watch Triumph of the Amateurs - The Transatlantic Tests of 1921 Surprise: Some red auroras are 'not' auroras The biggest geomagnetic storm in years erupted this month, Nov. 4th, after a CME slammed into Earth's magnetic field. Red auroras spread as far south as California and New Mexico. Upon closer inspection, however, not all of the lights were auroras. Full story @ Spaceweather.com. Six ways shoebox-sized satellites are trying to change the world The BBC News website has a fascinating article on the use of Cubesats. It says: The CubeSat is a small but mighty bit of tech. About the size of a shoebox, the tiny satellites were invented by Professor Bob Twiggs in 1999 as an educational tool for students. "They couldn't put very much in it, which was the real challenge. It forced them to quit adding things to their designs," Bob says, laughing. Quicker and cheaper to build and launch than conventional satellites, there are now hundreds of CubeSats orbiting Earth, made by universities, start-ups and governments. Here we look at six exciting projects that are trying to change the world... Read the full BBC News article at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-5934645

TUESDAY EDITION: Wow, 32  degrees this morning. ..I replaced the electrolytics in the R55a receiver I am working on and still a hum. So I am going to look at the wring diagram and see if the previous ham miswired the cap replacement he tried and never finished. I got the radio with two caps hooked only on one end, one was supposed to have a resistor wrapped around it in parallel and that was missing....anyways, the project lingers on as I have time and the motivation to complete  it.,....

The Energous WattUp 1W PowerBridge transmitter is approved for unlimited distance wireless charging in Europe

A 1W system from Energous has been approved for free-space charging in Europe

The 1W WattUp PowerBridge transmitter complies with European technical requirements for radio equipment and follows the recent FCC approval in the US. This allows designers to use the WattUp system to provide wireless power pver several metres to asset tracking tags such as those from Wiliot in France, electronic shelf labels and industrial IoT sensors.

The technology was developed with Dialog Semiconductor, now part of Renesas Electronics.

GaN-based wireless charging transmitter sees US certification
e-peas, Energous team for free space wireless charging
Energous, Wiliot team for battery-free IoT tags

“This approval for WattUp over-the-air charging at any distance in Europe enhances our ongoing partnership with Energous and our ability to bring OTA wireless power solutions to customers in Europe,” said Markus Schriebl, chief executive officer, TAGnology. “This opens up additional opportunities for Energous’ WattUp wireless power networks in Europe and allows us together to offer manufacturers in the region more approved WattUp-enabled wireless power options for a wide range of applications.”

“This major regulatory approval for Energous’ breakthrough technology opens many additional opportunities in Europe and around the world, including batteryless IoT devices and wearables,” said Sanjay Gupta, president of AirFuel Alliance. “AirFuel members continue to work closely with regulators to open up compliant pathways for wireless power to be transmitted over-the-air, benefiting manufacturers, consumers, and the environment alike.”

“Energous continues to offer the widest array of industry-leading wireless power transfer technologies in the market today,” said Cesar Johnston, acting CEO of Energous. “This latest regulatory approval is a testament of Energous’ leadership in the industry. We are excited to work with our partners in Europe as they develop new WattUp-enabled devices.”

MONDAY EDITION: I woke up to beeps and alarms on my Iphone, Tornado warning. That is a first....

Dayton Hamvention is a 'Go'

Dayton Hamvention 2022 is not just going to be a premier hamfest but a reunion, as organizers prepare for the first gathering at the Xenia Fairground and Expo Center in Ohio after two years of cancellations.

Hamvention's general chairman Rick Allnut WS8G said in a phone interview that committees have been meeting and volunteers are committed to making up for the time lost to pandemic cancellations.

Hamvention will be happening on Friday May 20th through Sunday May 22nd with an international reception scheduled on Thursday May 19th. Rick said the registration site is already taking bookings from vendors and inside exhibitors and individual visitors can already buy their tickets. All details are available on the hamvention.org website.

RIck said: "Tickets are all printed and ready to go."

Foundations of Amateur Radio

The Rebirth of Homebrew

On the 12th of December 1961, before I was born, before my parents met, the first amateur radio satellite was launched by Project OSCAR. It was a 10 kilo box, launched as the first private non-government spacecraft. OSCAR 1 was the first piggyback satellite, launched as a secondary payload taking the space of a ballast weight and managed to be heard by over 570 amateurs across 28 countries during the 22 days it was in orbit. It was launched just over four years after Sputnik 1 and was built entirely by amateurs for radio amateurs.

In the sixty years since we've come a long way. Today high school students are building and launching CubeSats and several groups have built satellites for less than a $1,000. OSCAR 76, the so-called "$50SAT" cost $250 in parts. It operated in orbit for 20 months. Fees for launching a 10cm cubed satellite are around $60,000 and reducing by the year.

If that sounds like a lot of money for the amateur community, consider that the budget for operating VK0EK, the DXpedition to Heard Island in 2016 was $550,000. Operation lasted 21 days.

I'm mentioning all this in the context of homebrew. Not the alcoholic version of homebrew, the radio amateur version, where you build stuff for your personal enjoyment and education.

For some amateurs that itch is scratched by designing and building a valve based power amplifier, for others it means building a wooden Morse key. For the members of OSCAR it's satellites. For me the itch has always been software.

Sitting in my bedroom in the early 1980's, eyeballs glued to the black and white TV that was connected to my very own Commodore VIC-20 was how I got properly bitten by that bug, after having been introduced to the Apple II at my high school.

I'm a curios person. Have always been. In my work I generally go after the new and novel and then discover six months down the track that my clients benefit from my weird sideways excursion into something or other.

Right now my latest diversion is the FPGA, a Field Programmable Gate Array. Started watching a new series by Digi-Key about how to use them and the experience is exhilarating.

One way to simply describe an FPGA is to think of it as a way to create a virtual circuit board that can be reprogrammed in the field. You don't have to go out and design a chip for a specific purpose and deal with errors, upgrades and supply chain issues, instead you use a virtual circuit and reprogram as needed. If you're not sure how powerful this is, you can program an FPGA to behave like a Motorola 65C02 microprocessor, or as a RISC CPU, or well over 200 other open source processor designs, including the 64-bit UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor.

I'm mentioning this because while I have a vintage HP606A valve based signal generator that I'm working on restoring to fully working. Homebrew for me involves all that the world has to offer. I don't get excited about solder and my hands and eyes are really not steady enough to manage small circuit designs, but tapping keys on a keyboard, that's something I've been doing for a long time.

Another thing I like about this whole upgraded view of homebrew is that we as radio amateurs are already familiar with building blocks. We likely don't design a power supply from scratch, or an amplifier, or the VFO circuit. Why improve something that has stood the test of time? In my virtual world, I too can use those building blocks. In FPGA land I can select any number of implementations of a Fourier Transform and test them all to see which one suits my purpose best.

In case you're wondering. My Pluto SDR is looking great as a 2m and 70cm beacon, transmitting on both bands simultaneously. It too has an FPGA on board and I'm not afraid to get my keyboard dirty trying to tease out how to best make use of that.

What homebrew adventures have you been up to?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Vibroplex Resurrection

Some of my favorite projects have been the restoration of old, dirty, neglected un-loved telegraph keys. Favorite among these are the venerable Vibroplexes. They are lovely instruments and first above all in telegraphy.  Several have passed through my hands on their way to a better life.

May I share with you some thoughts on the restoration of these flagship instruments?

Well, first we come to a complete disassembly. If you have trepidation here, your digital camera is your friend. I have watched several YouTube videos of things of all sorts being taken apart for repair or cleaning or restoration. Everything from telegraph keys to guns to clocks to whatever. Almost universally, the parts are simply removed and left to rattle around on the bench/designated work area. Not a good idea unless you have some affection for crawling around on the floor looking for some irreplaceable part . . .  Just get a pie pan or something to put the parts in and keep the critters corralled!

Next after complete disassembly comes a thorough cleaning of the parts. Some keys have come to me with some sort of nicotine varnish from decades of use by addicted operators. Others came from shacks that were obviously in the chicken coup. Many people have recommended soaking these encrusted parts in white vinegar but I don’t like this as vinegar is an acid and although a mild acid it is still an acid. I like to soak these dirty parts in ammonia. After a few hours they will come out sparkling clean. Then put the little parts in a large size tea strainer and rinse with hottest of hot water. Now dry them with a soft cloth and let the air dry.

Speaking of soft cloths; Wal-Mart sells flannel by the yard and it’s pretty cheap.

Sometimes some of the parts that are not chrome plated will be rusty. I like a product from HAPPICH called Semichrome (available at your local motorcycle shop – not to be getting distracted here!) to clean up the rust – work carefully here as these parts are not robust.

Once the chrome parts a very clean and completely dry, I like to give then a coat of paste wax. There is an old can of Simonize car wax in my garage . . .

Now, the base will also be nasty. First we will remove the brass plate. Use a 1/16” punch to drive out the drive pins. I like to use hot water, Dawn dishwashing soap and a fingernail brush. Rinse him off with hot water so he will air dry nicely.

Here is what I’ve done with the brass tags: they are coated with a clear varnish and the tarnish is underneath this coating. I soak the tags in fingernail polish remover overnight and then scrub carefully to complete the removal of the coating. Now you can use some Semichrome to polish the brass. I have made a tiny brush made from a cutoffed and frayed toothpick and some fingernail polish to carefully paint the bug. Once dry you might spray the tag with some clear whatever.

We will take a moment here to thank HER for all HER help! 

I like to repaint the bases but some don’t – your call. If you repaint note that the countersunk holes on the bottom must be free of paint as electrical contact is made thru them. I have mostly simply sprayed over the original finish with excellent results. Vibroplexes are mostly semi-gloss black but really, do they have to be?!

Now let’s look at the dit and dah contacts. If your key is old enough to have been used with a cathode keyed transmitter, the contacts will probably be pitted. I like to work these pits out using a readily available “points burnisher”. This is a small, very fine file. Then. I use some of the Semichrome on a flannel cloth and polish the contacts to a bright shine. On the Vibroplex website we are admonished to make sure that these contacts are perfectly flat and close perfectly square. In the world that we live in, this is a reality that is not going to come about; make one of them flat and the other one a bid rounded and all will be fine.

Reassembly is reasonably straightforward but you will be paying close attention to where all of the insulators go. If you get lost, there are parts diagrams on the Vibroplex website (thank you very much!). The older keys have fiber washers under the dit and dah posts. If these are beyond reuse, check your local hardware store for nylon washers of the appropriate size. You will be paying careful attention to the alignment of the contacts both vertically and horizontally.

The rubber feet will be hard as – well, they will be hard! You need to replace them with new rubber (not hard plastic) feet from the hardware store – or from Vibroplex. If you reuse the old hard ones the thing will slide all over the place in use

If the plating is deteriorated on the bottom connector straps you have two options: clean and use as is (my favorite) or see father Google re various DIY plating processes.

The stuff that I have undoubtedly left out should be easy enough to figure out.

Have fun!

Bill, W0WCA

 

WEEKEND EDITION: Another nice day on the rock.....

Foundations of Amateur Radio

The Rebirth of Homebrew

On the 12th of December 1961, before I was born, before my parents met, the first amateur radio satellite was launched by Project OSCAR. It was a 10 kilo box, launched as the first private non-government spacecraft. OSCAR 1 was the first piggyback satellite, launched as a secondary payload taking the space of a ballast weight and managed to be heard by over 570 amateurs across 28 countries during the 22 days it was in orbit. It was launched just over four years after Sputnik 1 and was built entirely by amateurs for radio amateurs.

In the sixty years since we've come a long way. Today high school students are building and launching CubeSats and several groups have built satellites for less than a $1,000. OSCAR 76, the so-called "$50SAT" cost $250 in parts. It operated in orbit for 20 months. Fees for launching a 10cm cubed satellite are around $60,000 and reducing by the year.

If that sounds like a lot of money for the amateur community, consider that the budget for operating VK0EK, the DXpedition to Heard Island in 2016 was $550,000. Operation lasted 21 days.

I'm mentioning all this in the context of homebrew. Not the alcoholic version of homebrew, the radio amateur version, where you build stuff for your personal enjoyment and education.

For some amateurs that itch is scratched by designing and building a valve based power amplifier, for others it means building a wooden Morse key. For the members of OSCAR it's satellites. For me the itch has always been software.

Sitting in my bedroom in the early 1980's, eyeballs glued to the black and white TV that was connected to my very own Commodore VIC-20 was how I got properly bitten by that bug, after having been introduced to the Apple II at my high school.

I'm a curios person. Have always been. In my work I generally go after the new and novel and then discover six months down the track that my clients benefit from my weird sideways excursion into something or other.

Right now my latest diversion is the FPGA, a Field Programmable Gate Array. Started watching a new series by Digi-Key about how to use them and the experience is exhilarating.

One way to simply describe an FPGA is to think of it as a way to create a virtual circuit board that can be reprogrammed in the field. You don't have to go out and design a chip for a specific purpose and deal with errors, upgrades and supply chain issues, instead you use a virtual circuit and reprogram as needed. If you're not sure how powerful this is, you can program an FPGA to behave like a Motorola 65C02 microprocessor, or as a RISC CPU, or well over 200 other open source processor designs, including the 64-bit UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor.

I'm mentioning this because while I have a vintage HP606A valve based signal generator that I'm working on restoring to fully working. Homebrew for me involves all that the world has to offer. I don't get excited about solder and my hands and eyes are really not steady enough to manage small circuit designs, but tapping keys on a keyboard, that's something I've been doing for a long time.

Another thing I like about this whole upgraded view of homebrew is that we as radio amateurs are already familiar with building blocks. We likely don't design a power supply from scratch, or an amplifier, or the VFO circuit. Why improve something that has stood the test of time? In my virtual world, I too can use those building blocks. In FPGA land I can select any number of implementations of a Fourier Transform and test them all to see which one suits my purpose best.

In case you're wondering. My Pluto SDR is looking great as a 2m and 70cm beacon, transmitting on both bands simultaneously. It too has an FPGA on board and I'm not afraid to get my keyboard dirty trying to tease out how to best make use of that.

What homebrew adventures have you been up to?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

and then I woke up....

ISS SSTV Dec 1-2 145.800 MHz FM

Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are planning to transmit Slow Scan TV images on 145.800 MHz FM using the SSTV mode PD-120

The transmissions are part of the Moscow Aviation Institute SSTV experiment (MAI-75) and will be made from the amateur radio station RS0ISS in the Russian ISS Service module (Zvezda) using a Kenwood TM-D710 transceiver.

December 1, 2021 (Wednesday) from 12:10 GMT until 19:10 GMT*

December 2, 2021 (Thursday) from 11:40 GMT until 17:20 GMT*

*Dates and times subject to change.

The signal should be receivable on a handheld with a 1/4 wave whip. If your rig has selectable FM filters try the wider filter for 25 kHz channel spacing.

You can get predictions for the ISS pass times at
https://www.amsat.org/track/

Visualizations show the extensive cloud of debris Russia’s anti-satellite test created

It’s going to be a problem for years, if not decades

Satellite trackers have been working overtime to figure out just how much dangerous debris Russia created when it destroyed one of its own satellites early Monday — and the picture they’ve painted looks bleak.

Multiple visual simulations of Russia’s anti-satellite, or ASAT, test show a widespread cloud of debris that will likely menace other objects in orbit for years.

Early this week, Russia launched a missile that destroyed the country’s Kosmos 1408 satellite, a large spacecraft that orbited the Earth roughly 300 miles up. The breakup of the satellite created at least 1,500 pieces of trackable fragments, according to the US State Department, as well as thousands of smaller pieces that cannot be tracked.

All of those pieces are still in low Earth orbit, moving at thousands of miles an hour and posing a threat to any objects that might cross their path. Initially, that even included the International Space Station, with crew members on board forced to take shelter in their spacecrafts as the debris cloud from the satellite passed by the ISS a couple of times.

Read more at
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22791176/russia-asat-satellite-test-space-debris-visualizations

 

FRIDAY EDITION: How about those Patriots and Mac Jones and that defensive unit? ....

THURSDAY EDITIION: Wow, it's gong to be 60 degrees today and sunny, It has been a great fall! ...

Russia's Destruction of an Orbiting Satellite Raises Space Debris Concerns

Radio ham signs to Cooking Vinyl for debut solo album

Radio amateur Dave Rowntree M0IEG has signed to Cooking Vinyl. His debut solo album is expected to be released in 2022

Music Week reports:

Dave Rowntree said: "As a kid I used to spend hours spinning the dial on my radio, dreaming of escape to all the places whose exotic stations I heard. I've tried to make an album like that - tuning through the spectrum, stopping at each song telling a story about a turning point in my life, then spinning the dial and moving on. I'm very excited to be releasing the album on Cooking Vinyl next year."

Read the Music Week story at
https://www.musicweek.com/labels/read/cooking-vinyl-signs-blur-s-dave-rowntree-for-debut-solo-album/084665

What Ham Radio can teach us about power efficiency In her article Jennifer Sensiba K3JEN reminds us the 'QRP' corner of the amateur radio hobby has been pioneering doing something with almost nothing for decades She writes: To better understand how these “efficiency nerds” have helped the world, we need to look at what it’s possible to do now. It turns out that the work of “silly” energy efficiency hobbyists can do a lot of good in the world. Some of them made it a point to see just how little power they could use exchanging messages around the world, and this is known in the ham world as QRP. The challenge is to communicate on 5 watts or less. The easiest thing to do in the beginning was to use better and better antenna systems to get the most range out of those 5 watts, but the use of Morse code and then computers allowed the power levels to go even lower. As computers have become more capable, signal analysis has improved to the point where some operators are sending signals thousands of miles with only a few millionths of a watt. Read her article at https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/17/what-ham-radio-can-teach-us-about-power-efficiency/ What is Amateur Radio? http://www.essexham.co.uk/what-is-amateur-radio Free UK amateur radio Online Training course https://essexham.co.uk/train/foundation-online/

Jeanette KN6DAD used WSPR data to investigate Sporadic E The EI7GL blog reports on the recent TAPR PSR newsletter article titled 'Detecting Putative Sporadic E Propagation in WSPRNet Spot Records' Jeanette Zhou KN6DAD outlined how she used data from the WSPRnet website to investigate Sporadic-E propagation. She writes... "WSPRNet propagation data were downloaded from http://wsprnet.org/drupal/downloads  and solar indices were from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) (gfz-potsdam.de) in February, 2021. WSPRNet spot records of 28, 50, and 144 MHz transmissions during 2020 were then used for the analysis, combining related spot records with the same timestamp and sender call sign to remove duplicates. Putative sporadic E propagations were identified as when a transmission’s distance was about 1200 km in the above identified bands; the total number of records used for the analysis was 1,118,989. " Read the EI7GL blog at https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/ https://twitter.com/ei7gl Read Jeanette's article published in TAPR PSR #150 page 7 https://files.tapr.org/psr/psr150.pdf

WEDNESDAY EDITION: A little cold on the rock this morning, taking another truck load of leaves to the dump on my agenda ....CQ  magazine still having problems getting issues out on a timely basis, now QST faces a paper shortage and late delivery issues, you can still get the digital issue online.....

Find out why we say "Mayday" when we're in distress

"Mayday!" is an international distress call, airplane pilots, boat captains and some emergency response personnel use it.

We began to use this word just after World War I, as nations around the world realized we needed some word everyone would understand, besides the Morse code SOS.

Because air traffic was building between London and Paris, the radio experts decided on a French word
"Mayday," the French pronunciation of "m'aider" ("help me").

The U.S. started to use it in 1927, and you say it three times to get attention. But there’s another signal that means we've got a problem but it's less urgent than a Mayday. Your boat ran out of fuel, or you've had a breakdown.

Again, we go to French and say "pan-pan."

In French, a panne is a breakdown, a mechanical failure. In English, we pronounce it PAHN and sometimes PAN.

P-A-N can also sand for something: “possible assistance needed” or “pay attention now.”

Radio amateurs assist in rescue of firefighters buried in cave

On Sunday, October 31, the State Network of Emergency Radio amateurs REER-SP provided support in the care of the disaster that occurred in Altinópolis / SP

A translation of the LABRE post reads:

Twenty-eight civilian firefighters were carrying out an exercise in the Two Mouths Cave when part of the cave collapsed, leaving nine deaths among the victims buried. The search and rescue operations were carried out by the Fire Department of SP, with the support of the State Civil Defense.

THE REER-SP had important participation providing communication between the Command Post, installed about 800m from the basement, and the rescue area, difficult to access. To overcome this distance, it took between 30 and 40 minutes of narrow trail walking in dense forest. The volunteers of REER-SP involved the work in the early hours of the morning, continuing until 8 pm.

The participation of the radio amateurs was effective, providing infrastructure and radio equipment to enable communication between the Operation Command and the rescue teams, who were without contact due to lack of telephone signal or internet. The support of the radio amateurs brought greater agility to the operations, enabling the command to receive and transmit messages directly to the rescue team.

We're sorry for the nine fatalities, we offer condolences to the family members.

Emergency Radio Communications event in Switzerland

This year's Swiss Emergency Radio Communications event took place on November 13

Switzerland's national amateur radio society, USKA, reports among those taking part was the newly formed Funk- und Technikverein Solothurn (HB9FTS).

In August 2021, several radio amateurs, CB radio operators and technically interested persons joined forces and founded the Funk- und Technikverein Solothurn
https://www.hb9fts.ch/

In addition to practicing our hobby, they also want to be active in emergency radio. Emergency radio (or disaster radio) is the radio operation with which radio amateurs provide assistance in emergency and disaster situations as part of their communication possibilities. Radio amateurs support aid organizations and other authorities and organizations.

The organizations EVU Nordwestschweiz, IPARC Switzerland and the Radio and Technology Association Solothurn HB9FTS took part in this event together. Shortwaves, CB, PMR, VHF and UHF radios and a new Data Hi Speed Network (AREDN) were used.

A video of the SEC can be seen at
https://www.hb9fts.ch/2021/11/13/bericht-telem1-notfunk-contest/

 

TUESDAY EDITION: Going to Doc at 9, last appt. for my shoulder repair, now on to my good knee. I might need a little cleaning up inside the knee..great getting old.....Thanks Rusky's.....

What's wrong with this?

December 2021 Issue of QST to Mail Mid-Month, Arrive Thanksgiving Week

MONDAY EDITION: Good morning hamsters, another day in paradise here, sunny, warm and plenty to do today...We just got the Icom 7300 on the air remotely using the remotehams.com client software. It is available to members of the club after a brief training program. We give the newcomers the ability to listen only for 30 days and then add transmit capability. It does the trick and is hooked up to our G5RV antenna with a ldg autotuner and is good for 10-40 meters. Good deal....

WEEKEND EDITION: RIP Peter....

Peter Cantara, KI1M - SK
Salem, New Hampshire
It is with a sad heart that Ham Radio Outlet announces that Peter Cantara, KI1M, is now a silent key. Peter worked at Rivendell Electronics before moving to HRO in Salem, NH in 1997. Peter, an Extra Class licensee, later became the manager of the Salem store, a position he held for several years. He had an incredible work ethic and would regularly come to the store on his days off, just to help out. Peter was loved by his coworkers and will be sorely missed.
Peter Cantara 11/8/62 - 11/10/21

October 2021 Volunteer Monitor Program Report

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Defeating the Pitfalls of Predicting HF Propagation

As you might know, I like to transmit with as little power as possible, known as QRP operation. My own station runs at 5 Watts, since on HF, that's as low as my radio will go. I could go lower by turning down the microphone gain, which interestingly is how some radios actually operate, but for now, 5 Watts seems to be a good starting point and truth be told, even though I've been here for a while, I feel like I'm learning something new every day.

One of the largest challenges associated with using low power on HF is propagation on the HF bands which is more fluid than ever. There's plenty of variables. For example, in addition to the day-night cycle, there's Earth's magnetic field, the impact from coronal mass ejections as well as the solar cycle. As that cycle waxes and wanes, or in my case, wanes and waxes, propagation trends are affected on a longer term basis.

There's all manner of tools to explore this. The Australian Space Weather Service is one of many such bodies that create ionospheric prediction maps showing frequencies and their propagation through the ionosphere. Then there's the derivative ones that use this data to declare if a band is open or closed, spread widely across the globe with little in the way of context, like time, or location.

There are tools like VOACAP which attempt to predict the point-to-point path loss and transceiver coverage dependent on antennas, solar weather and time and date. They also attempt to arrive at a so-called MUF, the Maximum Usable Frequency, defined as the highest frequency at which ionospheric communication is possible for 50% of the days in a month. The LUF, the Lowest Usable Frequency is defined as the frequency at which communication is possible 90% of the days of the month.

All these tools have one thing in common. They're predictions and forecasts. They reflect an attempt at quantifying reality. There is a place for this, but my often repeated encouragement of getting on air to make some noise is advice that covers the gap between prediction and reality.

I've long been a fan of using Weak Signal Propagation Reporter, or WSPR as a tool to measure actual propagation. What I like most about it is that it can be used on your own station, using your own antenna, at any time.

It occurred to me the other day that there must be a relationship between a WSPR signal and a voice signal. Not a mathematical one, but one that makes the difference between establishing a voice contact with another station and calling CQ until you're blue in the face.

With that in mind I took a leap and purchased a ZachTek Desktop WSPR transmitter, capable of operating on all the HF bands that my license permits. It was shipped from Sweden this week and it is expected to take more than a month to get to me, likely most of that travelling between Sydney and Perth, but when it does, I'll be able to set up my own in-house 200 milliwatt beacon that will show me just how far my signal goes on the bands that I pick. As an aside, I'm still looking for a similar solution for 2m and 70cm since there are all manner of interesting propagation phenomena associated with those bands as well.

I'm still digging into how I can best gather the reception data to visualise it and I'm working on a strategy that can send me an alert when a particular band is open from my station at such a level that I can look to operating a particular mode, like FT8, or SSB, or anything that I might choose.

The data is public, thanks to the various WSPR reporting systems around, so others in my grid square, likely beyond that, will also be able to benefit from my beacon. I'm considering generating a propagation map from my own station and publish that, but it's too early to say what's involved in making that happen.

Right now I've dived into the rabbit-hole associated with finding a suitable antenna. My current station vertical requires a tuner and I don't think that finding a way to tune my antenna every time the beacon changes band is a good solution.

I suspect that I'll also need to come up with a way to have two transmitters share the same antenna, but I'll cross that bridge when I need to.

Once the beacon arrives, it's my intention to start with 10m as my beacon band using my current antenna, since 10m is on the verge of being useful for my QRP adventures and I must confess, I'm looking forward to making a voice contact with the other side of the planet with my station for the first time in a long time.

What kinds of things can you think of that would benefit from a solution like this?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Introducing the ID-52E D-STAR Digital Handheld Transceiver!

The ID-52E, VHF/UHF dual-band digital transceiver, the latest in a long line of D-STAR handportables from Icom will be available from authorised Icom dealers at the beginning of December.

he ID-52E succeeds the popular ID-51E PLUS2 and is the latest Icom model to work on the D-STAR (Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) network.

What immediately strikes you about this model is its large transflective colour display that makes it easy to see outdoors, even in bright sunlight. The size of the display has also been increased to 2.3 inches from 1.7 inches on the ID-51A/E.

The ID-52E supports Bluetooth communication as standard. You can wirelessly connect to Android devices with the ST-4001A/ST-4001I Picture Utility Software, and RS-MS1A Remote Control Software installed. The optional VS-3 Bluetooth® headset is also available, for hands-free operation.

ID-52E D-STAR Digital Handheld Transceiver Features:

• Simultaneous reception in V/V, U/U, V/U as well as DV/DV.
• Waterfall Scope Function
• Airband reception is expanded from VHF to UHF (225 to 374.995 MHz).
• Can be charged via a micro USB connector.
• Audio output has been increased from 400 mW to 750 mW.
• The latest D-STAR functions allow you to send, receive and view saved photos on an installed microSD card using only the ID-52E.
• Accessories for the ID-51E, including battery packs and microphones, can be used.

In addition to the above, the ID-52E has a variety of other features including DR function with easy set-up, built-in GPS receiver, micro SD card slot, IPX7 waterproof construction (1-metre depth of water for 30 minutes), and Terminal/Access Point modes.

Having many great features, the ID-52E will appeal to not only beginners but for those experienced operators who want to get even more out of the D-STAR network.

AMATEUR RADIO NEWSLINE

BREAKING NEWS: DAYTON HAMVENTION IS A 'GO'

STEPHEN: We begin this week with breaking news.
Dayton Hamvention 2022 is not just going to be a premier hamfest but a reunion, as organizers prepare for the first gathering at the Xenia Fairground and Expo Center in Ohio after two years of cancellations. Hamvention's general chairman Rick Allnut WS8G told Newsline in a phone interview that committees have been meeting and volunteers are committed to making up for the time lost to pandemic cancellations.

Hamvention will be happening on Friday May 20th through Sunday May 22nd with an international reception scheduled on Thursday May 19th. Rick said the registration site is already taking bookings from vendors and inside exhibitors and individual visitors can already buy their tickets. All details are available on the hamvention.org website. RIck said: "Tickets are all printed and ready to go."

**

HAMS IN JAPAN HOMEBREW THEIR OWN FEST

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Hams have always believed that if you really want something, sometimes it's better to build it yourself. Nowhere is that more evident lately than in Japan, where radio operators were disappointed once again this year by cancellation of that nation's major radio event. Graham Kemp VK4BB tells us more.

GRAHAM: Never mind that the Tokyo Ham Fair was cancelled again this year by the Japan Amateur Radio League because of COVID-19 precautions. The Virtual Ham Festa 2021 has taken its place thanks to the creativity of a group of independent dedicated radio amateurs. Scheduled speakers included Shiro Sakai JH4PHW, explaining the best practices for using eQSL and Yuki Shimizu We JO2ASQ, explaining amateur satellite communications. One of the biggest topics on the agenda was the resurgence of CW.

A true homebrew project built on the Zoom platform, the November 13th hamfest was designed with a Main Stage for seminars and live presentations. Other features included booths and a space for eyeball QSOs. The organising committee was headed by Taka, 7K1BIB, who said that like all major ham radio events, an on-the-air component was also a big part of the plan: As a social experiment an international FT8 QSO Party was to take place on 40 metres in parallel to the virtual event.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Graham Kemp VK4BB.

(TAKA 7K1BIB, SOUTHGATE)

**
THE NATURE OF EXCITEMENT FOR SLOVENIA'S WWFF

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: The World Wide Flora & Fauna program has welcomed S5FF — Slovenia — and hams there are eager to share the excitement. Ed Durrant DD5LP brings us up to date.

ED: Radio operators in Slovenia held a quiet but well-earned celebration during the first full weekend in November as they marked their nation's arrival as a registered region in the Worldwide Flora & Fauna programme. It was the culmination of two months of intense effort by a team of hams including Mike Gregoric S55GX, who said the team members are all experienced SOTA, IOTA and World Castles Award activators. Mike, who has been a ham since 1995, told Newsline that he realized this past summer that Slovenia needed to organize and become part of the awards programme, which would require adding a national log manager and coordinators. WWFF vice chairman Manfred Meier DF6EX and member administrator Luk Waterschoot ON4BB encouraged the Slovenian team's efforts. Mike, who serves as coordinator, told Newsline that the team pulled all the essential ingredients together, a web page, an S5 logo and the definition of all the new activation areas. Mike said that there are now 191 such sites — and the numbers are growing.

Some other possibilities are growing too: Mike hopes Slovenia's participation will encourage more portable operations and even boost amateur radio tourism from abroad. He told Newsline: [quote] "Everyone can make nature their shack." [endquote]

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Ed Durrant DD5LP.

(MIKE GREGORIC, S55G; MANFRED MEIER, DF6EX, WWFF WEB PAGE)

**
SPEEDWAY QSL CARDS RACE TO THE FINISH LINE

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: If you're still waiting for your QSL cards from the three Indianapolis Motor Speedway special events, they're on their way. Jack Parker W8ISH gives us a look behind the scenes of the massive mailing that's been going on.

[sound clip: envelope being cut open]

JACK: That’s the sound of another self-addressed, stamped QSL envelope being opened for processing. Members of the W9IMS Special Event Station gathered to open, separate and then fill-in and mail out thousands of QSL cards following a summer of racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

BILL: “This is what we call our Monster card party. We have a few others that we do and then they trickle in all year long.”

JACK: Bill Kennedy, W9YT coordinates the special event stations and the Monster chore stuffing and returning thousands of QSL cards each fall. A behind-the-scenes look at this QSL process found it takes dozens of W9IMS members to get the job done.

BILL: “We have a big following. They want to work us every year and make a big effort to get all three races.”

JACK: W9IMS is the official special event station for three of the IMS races. They operate 24/7 for a week prior to the Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 mile race in May. In August they again fire up the radios for the Brickyard 200-race. A custom-designed QSL card is produced for each race. Those stations who log all three race events receive a special certificate as well. This is the 18th year for this W9IMS special event station. Bill says the summer time operation often reflects the solar cycles. This year’s total contacts fell just short of the 18,000 recorded contacts a few years ago. As the sun cycle fell, so did the total contacts.

Bill: “You could follow the total card by following the solar cycle. As the cycle came down so did our Qs. As the cycle is going back up our Qs are going back up.”

Jack: Bill says this crew has become very proficient in not only logging contacts but in filling out the QSL cards and certificates after the checkered flag falls on the last race of the season.

Bill: “That’s a lot contacts and a lot of cards to do at the end of the year.”

Jack: For Amateur Radio Newsline, this is Jack Parker, W8ISH

**
NORWAY PLANS ENTRY-LEVEL CERTIFICATE

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: The Norwegian Radio Relay League, Norway's national amateur radio organization, is working with a research institute there to help introduce an entry-level amateur radio category that would become available to operators as young as 12 or 13. Operators would be permitted a maximum transmitting power of 10 watts. The goal is to encourage the newest amateurs to build their own simple transmitters and receivers and spur interest in technology and science to complement ther schoolwork. NRRL is working to move this certificate forward with funds provided for the study by the Norwegian Research Council. Norway presently has only one class of radio operators.

(SOUTHGATE)

**

AUSTRALIAN 2x1 CALLSIGNS DEBUT IN WORLDWIDE CONTEST

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: With the CQ WW SSB contest over, no doubt you have more than a few contest callsigns in your log. How many of them are among the newest from Australia? Let's hear more from Jason Daniels VK2LAW.

JASON: The long-awaited 2 x 1 VK contest callsigns got their first official run on the air during the big CQ WW SSB contest in late October. The Wireless Institute of Australia reports that assignment of the calls by the Australian Maritime College came just in time for the global competition. In fact, three of the WIA's own directors were assigned the calls for use in the competition. Some reports say that many amateurs who heard the new contest calls were at first confused by the unusual single-letter suffixes but everything ultimately ran smoothly. If you have thoughts you'd like to share about Australia's new contest callsigns, the WIA is eager to hear your comments. Send them on to national office at wia dot org dot au (nationaloffice@wia.org.au)

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jason Daniels VK2LAW.

(WIA, SOUTHGATE)

**
HEDY LAMARR SPECIAL EVENT SHOWS STAR QUALITY

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: The late American actress Hedy Lamarr is apparently still a big star as far as the world's amateur radio operators are concerned. The sixth annual Hedy Lamarr Day Net, N9H, drew 190 check-ins from around the world. The special event was held on November 9th on Echolink on what would have been the actress' 107th birthday. Organizer John Derycke (duh-RYE-Key) W2JLD called it the most successful Hedy Lamarr event to date. Hedy Lamarr was being celebrated for her on-screen talents but most especially for her role as co-inventor of a frequency hopping system that prevented jamming of radio signals to torpedos and now forms an important part of today's cell-phone and WiFi networks.

**

POPULAR DATV MAGAZINE ENDS PUBLICATION

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: The digital amateur TV magazine known as CQ-DATV, has published its final issue. Geri Goodrich KF5KRN has that story.

GERI: In a publishing lifetime that lasted for eight years with 100 issues, the amateur television magazine CQ-DATV filled a gap left by the demise of two earlier ATV magazines and had been widely read among enthusiasts. That era has ended with the publication of its latest - and last - issue, released in October. The production team's Trevor Brown G8CJS writes in this 100th issue: [quote] "All good things must come to an end and CQ-DATV is no exception." [endquote] The digital-only publication reports that it received more than 500,000 downloads during its lifetime and was welcomed by readers who had lost "Der TV Amateur," published in Germany and "Repeater" published in the Netherlands. CQ-DATV credits Ian Pawson G0FCT who introduced the magazine in 2013 as a digital publication and served as its editor. The magazine, which also became available as a PDF edition, is making all of its 100 issues available for download. They can be obtained by visiting the link that appears in the text version of this week's newscast script on our website arnewsline.org

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Geri Goodrich KF5KRN.

(SOUTHGATE, CQ-DATV)

[FOR PRINT, DO NOT READ" https://cq-datv.mobi/ebooks.php ]

**

IRELAND AND INDIA JOIN PARKS ON THE AIR

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Portable radio enthusiasts are thrilled with the news that Parks on the Air has added two new countries. Here's Vance Martin N3VEM with the latest.

VANCE: In Parks on the Air News, in October we welcomed Ireland and India to Parks on the Air! So please join me in saying dia duit and namaste to our newest POTA friends! October was another record-setting month, with an all-time high for both number of activators and number of QSOs, with 1,630 activators making a combined 329,019 QSOs.

In our last news item for the month, POTA is excited to officially announce that for our 2022 summer plaque event, we will be adding several plaques for DX QSOs. There will be up to 6 DX plaques available, pending sponsorship – one each for the most QSOs made as an activator outside of the continental United States for IARU Regions 1, 2, and 3, and 1 each for hunters who make the most QSOs with activators in those same regions. If you or your organization is interested in sponsoring one of these new DX plaques in 2022, please send an email to n3vem@parksontheair.com for details.
This is November 3 Victor Echo Mike with your October Parks on the air Update. Be sure to visit parksontheair.com for information about the program, and pota.app for spotting, park information, leader boards, and more.

(PARKS ON THE AIR)

**
WORLD OF DX

In the world of DX, be listening for special event callsigns ON75AF, ON75BAF and ON75BFS from Belgium. These callsigns are helping amateurs in the Belgian Air Force Amateur Radio Association mark the air force's 75 year anniversary. Be listening through the end of the year on HF, VHF and UHF where operators will be using CW, SSB and the digital modes.

In Rwanda, members of the Holy Land DX Group will be using the callsign 9X4X starting on the 24th of November and running through to the 1st of December. Listen for them on 160m through 10m where they will be using CW, SSB, RTTY and FT 8. They will also be in the CQ WW DX CW contest on November 27th and 28th. Send QSLs to Ruben, 4Z5FI.

Ferdy, HB9DSP, becomes a first-time DXpeditioner with the callsign 5Z4/HB9DSP when he operates from Kenya between December 2nd and the 16th. Listen for Ferdy on 20, 15 and 10 meters where he will be using mainly SSB with some FT8. Send QSLs to his home callsign, direct, by the Bureau or LoTW.

(OHIO PENN DX)

**
KICKER: A TRANSATLANTIC FRIENDSHIP POWERED BY STEAM

STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Learning about technology isn't always what it seems. As a group of girls in England recently found out, technology can lead to something wonderfully personal....called friendship. Jeremy Boot G4NJH picks up the story from here.

JEREMY: The 11- and 12-year-old girls are called the STEAMettes, a name that's a nod to their shared interest in Science Technology Engineering, Art and Maths. For the past four years the Kent County youngsters have been guided by John Hislop G7OHO, a retired physics teacher and an ambassador in STEM learning. Most recently John has taught them such basics as soldering and the coding of a microbit computer they were going to use to send CW they'd learnt. After Larry Olson W9INE saw a presentation by John and the STEAMettes at the QSO Today ham expo in August, Larry introduced them to Colorado teacher Ravi Davis, KF0FYL. Ravi has several newly licensed hams in her sixth-grade school who have also been coding microbits. Since the STEAMettes have studied Digital Mobile Radio in preparation for their Foundation licence, they put their knowledge to use in a transatlantic QSO on October 29th via DMR. The Colorado students used radios loaned to them by the Estes Valley Amateur Radio Club. Ravi told the local newspaper that this was the first DX contact for her students. They talked about their schools, their lives and the differences in their respective communities. Suddenly, even with 7600 km between them, the students felt none of that distance at all.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

THURSDAY EDITION: Veterans Day Ceremony is being held at the Rockport American Legion Hall this morning with a service done by  the local pastor, music, Air Force speaker, and a firing squad salute. Chesty Puller would be proud....

Veterans Day 2021 Special Events Announced

 

Website :

WEDNESDAY EDITION: I haven't been on the air for a few days so will catch up, today, hopefully 10-15 show a little life...no real ham news today becaue there isn't any...

FACT: Incans were really good at brain surgery

As long as human beings have been walking around the planet, we’ve been getting into situations and fights where a head can get seriously bonked. And as anyone who has taken a tumble and hurt their noggin, the consequences can be pretty dire if the head injury is serious—and treatment has to happen pretty quickly. Before the era of modern medicine, there was a way to relieve pressure after a head injury, called trepanation. Trepanning, is, in its simplest form, drilling a hole into a live person’s head to relieve that trauma.

There has been evidence of folks scraping off layers of a live person’s literal skull for thousands of years—sometimes dating back as far as the neolithic era in Europe. And this kept going until relatively recently—as recent at least as the American Civil War. But on the battlefield in the US, people were dying left and right from issues associated with trepanning, namely infection, even though the tools to do the drilling had, in theory, improved.

In fact, trepanation’s golden age was reached years before America existed as we know it today. Skulls discovered in Peru from the Incan era and prior showed remarkable rates of recovery, up to around 80 percent compared to the Civil War’s 50 percent,  even when some patients received as many as seven holes in their heads for various ailments. The researchers who made this discovery also found that trepanation was largely used as emergency medicine, not necessarily as a spiritual practice as some had assumed. Nowadays, a neurosurgeon is probably the best person to call if you hit your head, but the practice is still used in absolute emergencies where medical care is hard to come by. But whatever you do, don’t try trepanning yourself at home, despite what some modern-day pseudoscientists have to say

 

TUESDAY EDITION: Our local club will hold a monthly meeting this Saturday with lunch and the hands on building of simple antennas, if you are in the Gloucester, MA area stop by and say hello...

Here we take a look at the QYT KT-WP12 mini dual band radio. Or, otherwise known as an ANYSECU WP-9900.

PC ProgramDual BandExternal Speaker/PTTDTMF function, 2 tone, 5tonePatrol functionMonitoring functionTelehalo functionRemote death functionBoot functionAlarm functionCall keyLong distance communication25W power output